The Tree and the Vine

1

I MET ERICA IN 1938 at the home of a mutual acquaintance, a superficial acquaintance, as far as I was concerned, and not someone I wanted to invest a lot of time in. Wies and I had spent six weeks lying next to each other in a hospital room, and our time together didn’t inspire me to get to know her any better. After a month and a half, I’d had my fill. Wies is the type of woman who, once she gets another woman to herself, casts out a net of feminine solidarity, and the only way to escape is to run away as fast as you can, but that wasn’t an option for me at the time. She had thick skin, typical of her kind, and my lack of enthusiasm and feigned drowsiness only seemed to make her want to confide in me even more. After being released from the hospital two weeks before I was, she visited me often and brought me all kinds of flowers and treats.

I felt like I couldn’t completely ignore her after that, so every now and then I made a point to accept one of her many invitations. I had an aversion to offending people back then, not that I can blame myself for it anymore—it was at her house that I met Erica. It was a warm summer evening, and I decided to ride my bicycle over to Wies’s to pay my obligatory visit. To be honest, I was hoping she wouldn’t be home, that I’d be able to just drop a note in the mailbox, and my duty would be done. But the door opened as soon as I rang the bell, and I once again found myself trapped.

Erica was lying on the couch near the open doors to the balcony. When Wies introduced us, she seemed to hesitate for a moment as to whether she should stand up or stay lying down. My outstretched hand decided for her; with an agile swing of the legs, she slid off the couch. I was instantly attracted to her and forgot all about the burden of my visit. Even now, after all these years, I still picture Erica gliding off the couch and taking my hand. Her face was round and youthful, but there was something old about her mouth, as if it were being pulled down by the corners. She had a penetrating, somewhat melancholic look in her brown eyes. She was wearing sandals, bright blue wool socks, a pleated skirt and a red sports blouse unbuttoned at the neck. Her blond hair had been cut short with a fringe poking out at the neck that made her look like a boy in need of a haircut. In other words, she was dressed like a member of the Socialist Youth, a crowd I’d never felt very comfortable around. We had a couple of those girls at the office, and I stayed out of their way. But Erica seemed different. That first evening, I got the impression that she dressed this way because she was struggling to accept her own adulthood. Later, I realized that her clothes were really just the simplest solution to her financial stalemate. But I don’t attach much value to that discovery anymore either.

That night, at Wies’s house, Erica’s life became part of my own. It was a chance encounter, and I’ve often wondered what my life would’ve been like if we’d never met. For a long time, I saw myself as an innocent bystander, but I now know that I changed my course for Erica. Whether my life would’ve been better or happier without her—who knows? I certainly don’t.

Within a month of meeting each other, we moved in together. I’d already been planning to move for a while. I’d had enough of landladies, and my women’s boardinghouse had started to feel more like a boarding school. I’d been living there since I left home after my father died, and it was only out of laziness that I hadn’t left yet. Erica, on the other hand, had had a decisive row with her mother and was looking for a new place to live.

The rental contract for the apartment on the Prinsengracht was in my name. Erica was working as a journalist for Nieuws Post at the time and earning a novice’s salary. Her position was just one step up from a volunteer—the bait they used in those days to lure young people in and exploit them for all they were worth. Before that, she’d spent two years volunteering at a local newspaper and sponging off her mother’s income. Now she was stuck paying Ma back. It was a vicious cycle, and a fate shared by many young people during the depression.

The way that Erica talked about her mother made me laugh that first year. No matter what happened, she’d find the humor in it. At the time, I didn’t understand what was behind all her joking around about Ma; I simply enjoyed her talent for storytelling.

Ma called, she’d holler on her way up the stairs to our apartment after work. The General is going on vacation, and Ma can’t go. Once upstairs, she’d give an embellished report of all her mother’s complaints about the retired warhorse whose household she commandeered.

That first year with Erica on the Prinsengracht was full of surprises. Looking back, I have no idea how I accepted her often peculiar behavior with so little resistance. Of course, I saw her struggles and conflicts, but in those years, it was as if they were projected like silhouettes on a white screen—only later, after I had some insight into Erica’s background, did the images take on form and color. In those first twelve months together, I was spared the agony of understanding, simply because I was predisposed to restraint. We’d decided to each lead our own lives. It was a condition we’d set, prompted by an infantile desire to preserve some imaginary idea of freedom, a concession that, although we never actually demanded it from each other or had any deeper need for it, seemed important to us back then. It was an aggressive reaction to our youth, in which we—perhaps Erica more so than I—had had little opportunity to nurture our own sense of freedom. We clung to it, in ways that seem frantic to me now. This condition is what held me back from the giving and accepting that comes with a deeper friendship. Our attempt not to meddle in each other’s lives made that first year of living together a tour de force, and a long exercise in self-discipline on my part. Due to the instability of Erica’s nature, there was no regularity in our household to speak of. Nevertheless, a steady routine emerged, one that we could stick to without feeling encumbered by it. We didn’t talk about it, our life together just developed naturally.

I persuaded the landlord to knock down a wall so that Erica would get the alcove that connected our two rooms. My bed was pushed up against the sliding doors, and although they were always closed, we could still have late-night conversations before falling asleep, she in her bed in the alcove and me in mine behind the doors.

I’d closed those doors before we even signed the rental agreement. We were visiting the apartment for a third time just to make sure we’d made the right choice. Renting an apartment and all of the responsibilities that come with it brought me a lot of anxiety, which mostly hit me at night. But I didn’t let it show. That Sunday afternoon, I stood in the back room and Erica in the alcove.

Are you sure you want the front room, Erica?

She nodded enthusiastically. I’d rather have to hear cars and street noise than that, she said pointing to the balcony doors, which opened to the backsides of the houses on the street behind us. Fishwives and domestic disputes—I’ve had enough of that to last a lifetime.

I didn’t understand what she meant. The house where Erica and her mother lived with the General was on upscale Minervalaan. But I let it drop.

Let’s just tear down that wall, and then you can have the alcove. Otherwise your half is too small, my room is bigger. You can use the extra space for your bed and maybe a little table …

‘Oh let’s just tear down that wall,’ she mimicked. You think the landlord is crazy?

I’ll handle it, I said, suddenly feeling quite sure of myself. And otherwise, we’ll pay for it ourselves.

She gave me a probing look. You know I don’t have any money, don’t you? But if you’re so sure that the landlord …

So it’s a deal? I asked. We’ll sign?

She nodded slowly without enthusiasm and without taking her eyes off me. For a moment of reprieve, I walked to the back of the house and closed the balcony doors. Then, with a knowing glance in Erica’s direction—which elicited no reaction from her whatsoever—I closed the sliding doors in the middle of the room as well. This gesture was meant to symbolize our agreement to let each other be free. But in that moment, I didn’t quite know how to put it into words.

Our decision, which we celebrated afterward with a cup of coffee at a cafeteria, was just a postlude. Erica hardly said a word; we drank our coffee and went our separate ways. The next morning, she called me from the newspaper.

When are you going to sign?

During my lunch break.

Don’t forget about that wall!

In the weeks that followed, Erica was enthusiastic. She ignored all the minor setbacks that come with moving into a new place with a stubborn sense of optimism. She let me clear the obstacles. The fact that I’d gotten the landlord’s permission to tear down the wall had apparently convinced her of my capacities in such matters. I didn’t tell her that in exchange I’d had to sign a two-year lease.

Just take care of it, she’d say whenever I brought up topics like wallpaper, rugs, or hot water installations.

Propelled by her confidence in me, I found the courage to take on other endeavors that, under different circumstances, I would’ve never dared to try, I even went into debt. Erica was fully absorbed in furnishing her room. She was incredibly handy with tools. I’d never met a woman who was so good at carpentry. Her short, sturdy fingers were so skilled with a hammer and nails that within two weeks she had a primitively furnished room to move into. She didn’t have any money for household furnishings, but she’d find things on the street and drag them home to the Prinsengracht. In the evenings, she would transform them into useable pieces of furniture. Whenever I went back to my boardinghouse around midnight—I spent those weeks visiting the new apartment in the evening like a cat getting to know its new home—the light in her room was still on. I’d leave Erica bent over her work with a knee on the wood and a saw in her steady hand, a straight lock of hair hanging over her eyes, her sports blouse dark with sweat. The sound of her sawing and pounding echoed down the canal.

The next evening, when I asked her how late she’d stayed up working, she’d reply nonchalantly, Until four o’clock or so, I think. The sun was starting to come up. It’s quiet on the canal at night, so that’s good to know. Or: I just slept here, she’d say, pointing to a chair she’d just reupholstered. It wasn’t worth going home anymore. It sits great, nice and cushy.

Apparently, she was used to burning the midnight